Summary
Hospital nurse staffing, and the proportion of nurses with bachelor’s education, are associated with significantly fewer deaths after routine surgery, according to research published in the Lancet.
A team of researchers conducted the study across nine European countries and found that a better educated nursing workforce reduced unnecessary deaths. Every 10%increase in the number of bachelor’s degree educated nurses within a hospital is associated with a 7% decline in patient mortality.
Patients in hospitals, in which 60% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of six patients, had almost 30% lower mortality than patients in hospitals in which only 30% of nurses had bachelor’s degrees and nurses cared for an average of eight patients. The study shows that, in hospitals in England, an average only of 28% of bedside care nurses had bachelor’s degrees, among the lowest in Europe, which averaged 45%.
The study shows that increasing the production of graduate nurses is necessary if the NHS is to realise the potential of lower patient mortality and fewer adverse patient outcomes.
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